A rotary blade or impeller for mixing fluent, particulate, slurry, semi-liquid, or liquid materials is disclosed. More particularly, a rotary impeller is disclosed that is specifically adapted for mixing materials that contain agglomerates or other clumped masses of a type that necessarily requires relatively high shear and cutting action to enable grinding and breaking apart of the agglomerates and dissemination and dispersion thereof within a mixture.
Rotary impellers are known for use in a wide variety of industrial mixing applications to mix particulate materials, slurries and the like having various characteristics by creating turbulent flow of fluent material within a vessel when the impeller is rotated by a rotatable shaft of a mixing apparatus. Rotary impellers may also be used in an attempt to finely grind and break apart solid materials and/or agglomerates of materials that may or may not be suspended within a carrier material or fluid and to evenly disperse the solid material or agglomerates within the carrier material. Typically, the ability of the impeller to finely grind solid particles or agglomerates to a desired reduced size and to evenly disperse these particles throughout the carrier material is important toward the effectiveness of a final mixture. Thus, failure to provide a homogeneous final mixture can compromise the integrity of the product formed by the mixture and may prevent the product from functioning properly. Impeller imparts shear and collisions of particles causing particles to break apart.
Some mixing applications include grinding of particulate materials, powders, or slurries containing agglomerates that are particularly difficult to break apart and reduce in size and evenly disperse within a material. Such materials may include, for instance, high viscosity slurries and carrier materials having relatively hard and dense agglomerates and solid particles suspended therein. A blade or impeller for applications involving such materials is desired.